"Jeff Long - A Princess of Jasoom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long Jeff)

Eventually, I knelt before my Jeddak in the Temple of Reward, surrounded by
tapestries that bore images of my ancestors going back to the dawn of the
Empire. After the brief moment that protocol demanded, my father bid me
rise, and I spoke words that were old as the Empire:

"Mors Kajak, Jed of Lesser Helium, Defender of the Faith and son of Moros
Tar, seeks his Reward," I intoned, according to tradition. "May he serve Issus
in the proud manner he has served Helium."

My voice held. Barely.

Moros Tar looked down upon me from the Throne of Righteousness. He did
not speak the ancient response.

Instead, he closed his eyes. When his lids fluttered open, there was an
unmistakable redness.

"I am tired," said Moros Tar. "The war has taken an awful toll."

There was a heaviness in his voice I'd never heard before.

"My brother's victory was glorious, father," I said slowly, not reacting to the
subtle stirring in the great chamber behind me. "The Seige of Flemster is
ended."

Flemster is the Heliumetic city to the northeast of the capital that was the
scene of my brother's triumph. It was also the place of my greatest shame.

Moros Tar gazed silently upon my upturned face, his own countenance a
mask. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, that he'd begun to age. The
realization stunned me, as if I'd been struck with the flat of a longsword in
battle. There were lines about his eyes. The faintest streaks of gray were shot

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A Princess of Jasoom: The Death of Kings


through the jet-black hair I had always remembered. I detected the weight
upon his shoulders that eight hundred years of rule had brought to bear.

I saw my father as none -- save my mother, perhaps -- had ever seen him
before. Something of his loneliness was imparted to me in the still chamber
that day.

"It was no victory," he said.

Then Moros Tar smiled. Under the circumstances, it shocked me more than
the realization that he had become an old man.

"My jedwars have told me of my son's prowess in the field of battle," the